When you buy a frozen, pre-made pie, are you expecting it to be exactly like one you’d whip up from scratch using fresh ingredients? No, probably not. But if it’s advertised as a cherry pie, there should be some actual cherries involved, right?

Consumerist reader Tony was recently disappointed by this Sara Lee Oven Fresh Cherry Pie, which shows a glowing depiction of a pie crust fairly bursting with berries. Look, it couldn’t even fit those two other cherries, that’s how full it is!

But what came inside the package was a far cry from the photo on the front of the carton, laments Tony.

“The reality was something quite different,” he writes, adding that he sees it as deceptive advertising to show all those cherries and not deliver. And he would know, as he (or someone else) appears to have at least served, if not consumed, a fair portion of the pie. Eating to seek truth!

While the reality unfortunately often doesn’t live up to the advertising, the least Sara Lee could do is throw a few berries in there for texture instead of just injecting pie crust with whatever gelatinous, sweet flavored substance it uses and passes off as pie filling.

My advice to Tony and others who don’t want to go the extra mile (or miles) to bake a pie from scratch? Buy a pre-made pie crust and a can of filling, combine and pop in the oven. Voila.

In the meantime, we’ve reached out to Sara Lee’s parent company, Hillshire Brands, in an effort to get to the bottom of this cherry situation.

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